Biology geeks?

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I'm a biology geek.

Nick Lane writes fun books for biology geeks. His website:

http://www.nick-lane.net/index.html

I just finished his book about mitochondria called Power, Sex and Suicide and now I'm positively exhausted just thinking about everything my poor mitochondria have to do to make more ATP.


@Walrus, I'm happy to hear you will be studying biology. You seem to shine in those threads that require a working knowledge of biological principles and are likely to quite enjoy the field.

Yes, I have found that to be the case as well. Most Aspies I have meet enjoy Computer science. I personally enjoy Pathophysiology, Epidemiology and Psychopathology.

ex microbiologist here...I used to like bugs but nowadays have an interest in psychology

Yes, I love Biology!
When I was studying my undergraduate degree, I particularly enjoyed Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, Microbiology, and Genetics.
I have since moved on to teaching, however have a great love for the sciences.

My early aspiration was to become a veterinarian. When we wrote our first research paper in 7th grade, mine was titled "Common Diseases of the Horse's Hoof".

By writing that theme, I stumbled upon an important lesson in writing papers in English class. If you write about something that the teacher knows nothing about, then the teacher can only grade you on the grammar, not the subject matter. If you write about some topic in Literature, you not only get graded on the grammar, but you also get graded on the subject itself. The teacher knew absolutely nothing about the hooves of horses. I later heard that she described that theme as having the most unusual topic any of her students had ever written about.

All was well until high school. My high school biology was probably the most worthless biology teacher in the state of Texas. He was hired for his coaching, not for his knowledge of or ability to teach biology. After that, I had little interest in anything related to biology for about 20 years.

Well technically Biology IS sciency.

My degree is in Biology, but my obsession isn't in it unfortunately, although I am fascinated with the concept of evolution, particularly in humans.

I would have studied Biology if programming hadn't caught me first. Wonderful Life is still probably my favorite book.

I raise worms.

To do that I raise dense soil microbiology.

To do that I am scratch building soils.

Both Darwin and Tesla wrote about it, the wonders of dirt.

Super Soils for Global Warming, better living through dirt.

We have used up our dirt, degraded most of it, the only answer is build better dirt.

I am working on a Cellulose fueled chain bioculture,

Two foot deep, 50% organic material, digested by microbes, then again by worms, producing a black loam that holds water, feeds plants, and feeds me.

The base of the lifechain seems unstudied.

Biology is my favourite A Level so far at school. I can't get enough of it. I would love to become a medical pathologist. Trying to work out what disease a patient has from studying their cells (I loved studying cells under the microscope when I was younger) and symptoms is my ultimate dream job. I love studying diseases and what effects they have on the body. It's just fascinating to me. I think that it's astounding how life works, and that we evolved from one cell to a multicellular organism, to a super organism. Evolution is another. Homo sapiens have so many extinct cousins from different species that it's incredible. And that most humans have between 1-4% of Neanderthal DNA also astounds me.

I study Primatology and Evolutionary Biology. :-) I focus on great apes, who are our closest siblings in our extended family tree. I believe there is a lot of insight to be gained by focusing not on the differences between us and the other great apes, but on the similarities and experiences of consciousness that we share. I want to focus on those shared experiences, because there are many of them. The academic field of Primatology is still relatively new and has been very toxic in a lot of ways, for a long time, but I'm working to help change that.

I'm very interested in approaches to Primatology from non-neurotypical-normative perspectives, because a lot of Primatology research right now revolves around very outdated and very harmful ideas about cognition and "intelligence". Everything I know allows me to understand great apes more as peers with different abilities than me than as objects of research who are "lesser" than me, and I think knowing them that way can lead to many new discoveries and many new ways of learning about ourselves as humans, too.

That understanding also requires me to be a very outspoken advocate and activist for the immediate abolition of all use of primates in invasive laboratory research and as entertainment props, as well as the gradual introduction of all captive great apes to properly-managed sanctuaries and rehabilitation centers.

I'm also very interested in evolutionary biology in general!

I do bio too.

To anyone: what do you find most engaging about it?

What developments do you foresee, including in biotech?

I tried to do biology back when I was in high school, but I wasn't good at it. I didn't care much about cell structure and bacterial culture. I also hated lab work.

I guess I like biology, but I prefer to learn about how animals behave in their natural environment. I'm not very big on cell structure and cell division.

I also really like to read about prehistoric stem-crocodilians.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hesperosuchus